Documents obtained by a watchdog organization monitoring government spending for animal experimentation show federal grants of up to $10 million used for “painful and distressful” experiments on discarded dogs at the University of Iowa (UI), a member of the watchdog group said.
Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy for the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), told The Epoch Times that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have been using taxpayer dollars to let sandflies that had been starved for 12 hours feed off of dogs surrendered to the university.
The dogs carried a parasite—transmitted by sandflies—that can infect dogs and people with the tropical disease leishmaniasis.
“In this particular experiment, the dogs were locked in cages and the experimenters strapped capsules of sandflies to them to see if the dogs infected the sandflies,” Goodman told The Epoch Times. “When they were done, they killed the dogs.”
According to WCW, internal records show up to 21 foxhounds were donated to the university for the experiments that took place from 2017 to 2019.
“UI admitted to WCW that it destroyed some of the records related to the experiment and has refused to answer questions about the sources of the dogs it abused,” WCW said.
The experiments were funded by two grants from NIAID and NIH’s Fogarty International Center totaling up to $10 million in taxpayer funds. The grants are set to expire in June 2023.
Most of them were foxhounds, like the dogs in the sandfly experiment, because they are one of the breeds most likely to carry the disease in North America, MAF said.
“They discovered it was not only safe to give the vaccine to already infected dogs, but it also minimized disease in the experimental group,” MAF said.
According to MAF, leishmaniasis is caused by the parasite Leishmania infantum and is transmitted by sandfly bites in tropical countries.
“Symptoms can range from skin sores and weight loss to blindness and kidney failure,” MAF said. “Treatment is available, but most dogs die from the disease despite therapy.”
The MAF said there isn’t enough data to know how many dogs in the United States carry the disease, but that it could affect about 20 percent of dogs in southern Europe and is moving north.
University’s Response
In a response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, Chris Brewer, spokesman for University of Iowa, said the university’s long-term goal is to understand how to protect people and animals from vector-borne diseases through effective treatment and/or vaccination.“The development of new treatments for dogs often requires canine studies,” he said. “As part of its research mission to improve and extend the life of humans and animals, the University of Iowa conducted research on the zoonotic disease, leishmaniasis. All dogs in the research study contracted Leishmania naturally, meaning they were exposed to infection in the course of their regular life—not as part of an experiment at the University of Iowa.”
The dogs in the study had been diagnosed with leishmaniasis, which Brewer said is a fatal disease.
The dogs were donated with informed consent of their caretakers, and the research was initiated by people whose dogs were suffering from leishmaniasis, he said.
“Those caretakers worked hand-in-hand with UI researchers to establish what would happen during the study and what knowledge and treatments would be gained,” Brewer said. “All activities were approved by the University of Iowa Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.”
To guarantee proper care, Brewer said animal research involves veterinary and legal oversight.
“As a result, the research has discovered many remarkable lifesaving and life-extending treatments for cats, dogs, farm animals, wildlife, and endangered species,” he said.
‘Easy to Abuse’
WCW has acquired documents describing several government-funded experiments on animals, some of them not appearing to have a specific purpose.WCW uncovered NIAID’s experiments on beagles with a price tag of $375,000. These experiments involved having sandflies eat the dogs alive, as well as experiments that involved force-feeding 44 beagle puppies an experimental drug before killing and dissecting them.
In some of these procedures, NIAID staff performed a “cordectomy,” which involves cutting a dog’s vocal cords so that it can’t bark, howl, or cry during an experiment.
“The reason that the Department of Health and Human Services gives on its website for using beagles is that they are small and docile, meaning they are easy to abuse,” Goodman said in a previous interview for The Epoch Times.
Another experiment that cost taxpayers $2.3 million was conducted by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), itself a part of NIH.
NIDA told The Epoch Times in 2022 that the experiment was to test the safety of a new drug that would be used for the treatment of “cocaine disorder.”
In 2020, WCW reported that the NIH spent about $140 million on animal experiments in foreign countries, with a total of 353 labs in 57 countries worldwide that are authorized to receive U.S. taxpayer funds, including countries classified as foreign adversaries like China and Russia.
Lawmakers React
The watchdog group’s publishing of multiple documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests prompted 24 U.S. lawmakers to demand answers from Fauci in 2021.Among the lawmakers who have led efforts to ban the experiments on animals based on WCW’s reports have been Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
The information found in the documents prompted lawmakers to send letters to Fauci and present legislation that, until July 2022, seemed to go unnoticed by NIH.
In July 2022, WCW reported Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) confirmation that Fauci’s NIH division canceled plans to spend $1.8 million in taxpayer funds for a series of experiments on beagle puppies to test drugs to treat allergies.
In a rare response to a lawmaker, Fauci told Ernst, “Although the contract to Inimmune Corporation proposed the use of murine and canine preclinical animal models, after consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the company elected to proceed using two rodent models only. No experiments utilizing the canine model are being conducted under this contract.”
Also in July, a judge approved a plan to transfer 4,000 beagles out of Envigo, a breeding and research facility in Cumberland, Virginia, and into shelters.
The facility had been cited for multiple animal welfare violations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“During a seven-month period, over 300 puppies died,” WCW reported. “Dozens of beagles were found with fight wounds; others were severely diseased. Nursing mothers were deprived of food for nearly two full days.”
Protecting Dogs Subjected to Experiments Act
The most recent efforts to draw out accountability were WCW’s collaboration with Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) to reintroduce the bipartisan Protecting Dogs Subjected to Experiments Act, which would prohibit the use of dogs in any taxpayer-funded biological, medical, or behavioral research at NIH.“It’s time to stop our government’s barbarity and waste once and for all,” the authors said.
The Epoch Times contacted NIH and NIAID for comment.
